NOTE: THIS ARTICLE was written prior to the airing of the final two episodes of season one of True Detective.

Rust Cohle's monologues may seem like drunken atheistic dorm room philosophy, and maybe that's a fair assessment — but whenever a character starts ranting about the meaning of life in a piece like this, it's a solid bet they're telling us something about the writer's view of the story.

John Dies At The End

JOHN DIES AT THE END has a relatively tiny budget, but it's still one of the year's most anticipated movies. The novel it's based on, by Cracked's David Wong, was a huge Internet sensation, and we've been starved for truly oddball, universe-melting comic weirdness at the movies lately. So how does the movie of John Dies hold up?

The good news is, John Dies At The End is a film that punches its weight artistically. It's no masterpiece, but it's well directed with good comic performances, interesting characters, an intriguing premise and a story that unfolds at a satisfying pace. I give it two and a half demon-possessed mustache attacks out of four. Spoilers ahead...

IN RICHARD STANLEY'S post-apocalyptic techno-thriller Hardware (1990), Dylan McDermott plays Moses, an aptly named desert wanderer who scavenges the wasteland for salvage. On his way to visit his industrial artist girlfriend Jill (Stacey Travis), Moses and his sidekick Shades (John Lynch) purchase a mysterious robot head from zone tripper and Burning Man casualty Carl McCoy. Moses buys the head for Jill as a Christmas present because, as we all know, psychopathic robot heads are a girl's second best friend.